In Vogue: Meet the Stars of NYC’s Ballroom Scene

Come and meet some incredible men with some incredible moves – the stars of New York’s Voguing scene.

In the first episode of Night Visions, a three-part series made possible by Lynx, Thump explores New York’s buzzing ballroom scene. We’re not talking Dancing With The Stars here though. You’ll find no waltzes here. This is ballroom made modern.

New York is the city that never sleeps and, come sunset, halls and warehouses fill with unique, confident, fierce and quite frankly sexy men dancing through the night as though their lives depended on it.

Born in the sixties, the ballroom scene grew up as a place of sanctuary and support for gay and trans men, and anyone else who didn’t identify with the mainstream, to express themselves and show their magic to the world. The scene’s still underpinned by this founding principle but it’s grown into something so much bigger. As it states in the video ‘We were oppressed. But now, we’re not oppressed. We ARE fabulous.’ The scene embraces all comers. It’s an environment powered by respect and a determination of all involved, particularly the ‘mothers and fathers’ to help everyone else to be their best self.

Described as a ‘mini-Hollywood’, the ballrooms are a place where the dance floor and the catwalk meet, where voguers walk and werk – showing off the threads they’ve carefully pulled together by hand. It’s also a place for the people there to discover who they really are. Something that’s not always easy to do if you’re busy trying to fit in and conforming to other people’s idea of what it means to be a man.

The guys in this video really have thrown away the rulebook for what it meant to be a man. In fact, they’ve declared that there are no rules. They’re championing a modern-day masculinity, where macho stereotypes are a thing of the past.

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